We wanted to keep our relationship to ourselves at first. Part because of everything I went through before with Oliver and we didn't want to take any attention away from the team itself. But this turned out to be a lot more difficult than we thought. Beyond anything I felt badly not telling Oliver. I could tell he sensed something, and it felt almost like we were hiding it specifically from him during our first practice after our night together.
"I need to tell him," I said to Jake as we were hovering at the corner of the pitch together in between drills.
"Yeah. I was thinking that too. It feels like it would be making a bigger deal out of it to not tell him. He's our friend...he'll understand...right? Which one of us should do it?" He sighed.
"Whelp. I've known him the longest and have the most history good and bad so I guess it should be me." I said, taking a deep breath. "I'll hang back after practice and grab him."
"Yeah. I'll give you guys space." He said, looking down the pitch at him.
After practice was over a few of the guys were talking about grabbing lunch and heading out and I pulled Oliver aside.
"Hey, can we hang back and talk for a second?" I said to him quietly.
"Yeah, Guys you go ahead. Bell and I will catch up" He shouted at the rest of the team as they left the room.
"So…." I began, snapping my fingers and clapping my hands together.
"You and Jake are together" He stated.
"Yeaaaahhhh" I said looking up to him awkwardly. "We don't really want to be that vocal about it yet, but I wanted you to know. But clearly you already figured it out, I hope it's not going to be awkward between us all" I said, still swinging my arms back and forth.
"It's fine," he shrugged.
"I guess that's the best I can ask for right now." I sighed.
We just stood together for a few minutes silently.
"Well...we should probably head to meet up with the others" he broke the silence.
"Yeah. Yeah. Okay" So. I guess so much for it not being awkward.
As time went on it got more and more difficult to keep our relationship from the rest of the team. We were doing better than we ever had. Germany had come to London to play a game and Jake and I played amazingly. After a goal I scored I flew over to celebrate hugging him and it took everything in my being not to kiss him right then and there in front of the world. After the game I jumped on him and immediately began snogging him in the locker room. The rest of the team just started whooping and laughing, so it was clear this came as no surprise to any of them. We broke apart when we heard a locker door next to us slam. Oliver was standing there with raised eyebrows looking at us for a moment before turning and walking out of the room with the rest of the team.
"Whoops" I said, looking at Jake who still had me pressed against his locker.
As we walked back to the team lodging it began to snow. It was crazy how much of the year had gone by. It had been a roller coaster so far but I was really feeling happy right now. We cut through an alley that led to our building and there was a thin layer of snow already settled on the ground. Jake ran by me sliding in the slush and then turned running back to grab my hands causing us to slide around in circles. I lost my footing and slipped right onto my bum so he sat down next to me and tried to catch the now monstrously large flakes on his tongue. He stood, pulling me up to my feet under a light post illuminating the flakes falling around us. It was like standing inside of a snowglobe. He chuckled looking around seemingly thinking the same thing and pulled me into a deep kiss. It was something from a perfectly tacky made for TV christmas movie and I loved every minute of it. Yet, somehow I couldn't get the image of Oliver looking at us from his locker out of my head.
I was falling so madly in love with Jake. Our relationship was perfect, and all things considered Oliver really took the whole thing very well. So why was I thinking of him in such an otherwise perfect moment? We had a strict policy of not staying overnight in each other's rooms at the lodge in case any members of the press got in and found out. We were getting pretty relaxed about most things, and were bound to be caught any moment, but I stuck to this one thing. So Jake went upstairs to his room when we got home and I went into mine. Once again I barely changed out of my clothes before I plopped down on my bed and prayed for sleep.
I was in my living room with Jake staring into his emerald green eyes and we started kissing but something felt wrong. I pulled away from the kiss and I had been kissing Oliver…with Jake's eyes. "What's wrong Kates?" The Oliver said with Jake's voice.
I woke up and Jake was shaking me.
"What's wrong? Were you having a nightmare? You were breathing like someone was chasing you" He asked in a worried tone.
"What time is it?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.
"Nine…I made you breakfast…it's just cereal…practice is in two hours" He said with a smile.
"Freaky morning person" I said, giving him a small kiss.
I walked out and there was a bowl of cereal sitting on my counter with a glass of orange juice next to it.
I sat down and ate my breakfast.
"Honestly, what time do you get up in the morning?" I asked in between scoops of cereal.
"Lately…around 5" He said with a smile.
"Weeirrdo!" I said. He laughed and messed up my hair.
I still was thinking about my dream but trying to act like it was nothing. I never did take divination in school and I'm starting to regret it. Maybe there is something to that dream interpretation.
"Want to talk about it?" Jake said reading my face.
"No, just strange nonsense. You know how it is. I'll forget as soon as I wake up more" I smiled cheerfully. "I'm going to go take a shower...if you want to join." and that was the end of that conversation.
Oliver was in a particularly bad mood at practice that day. It turned out I didn't forget my dream when I woke up more. I suppose Oliver's pity party didn't help. The whole team seemed a bit out of it which the coaches were miffed about to say the least. We had a game against France in a few days and it was one of the first games that would be considered in our qualifiers for the cup tournament itself.
"Hey, do you want to talk?" I asked Oliver as we were all walking back to the lodge together after practice. Jake was a bit ahead yelling to Mica about some muggle movie they watched the night before.
"I'm fine" he grunted
"You're going to play that card then, yeah?" I asked, shoving him a bit with my shoulder as we walked.
"It's nothing" he kept his eyes forward as we walked.
"Oliver Nolan Wood, I know you well enough to know when something is bothering you." I said
"Yep. And you know me well enough to know when I don't want to talk about it" He said, and turned to walk down a different street.
"What was that about?" Jake said falling back to talk to me.
"I don't know," I sighed. Or at least I'm going to pretend to not know.
I'm in a room so dark I can't see my hands in front of my face. I tried to walk around but was being held in place by something. I could hear Jake calling my name, but I couldn't reach him. Sometimes it would sound like he was so close that I should be able to touch him and other times like he was on the other side of the room. I was fighting the restraint, flailing and trying to move when there was an ear splitting boom and a flash of light like a thunderstorm.
I woke up with tears pouring down my face covered in sweat. Jake was holding my shoulders looking at me with a panicked look. We had given up on not sleeping over, especially after Oliver got all moody, I figured he was already pissed off what more could we do?
"Are okay? I left to look out the window and I could hear you screaming. Are you crying? Seems like a bad nightmare" He said, wiping my tears away.
"Yeah… this was the weirdest one of them all" I panted. Still figuring out what happened and where I was.
"Want to talk about it?" He said sitting down on the side of my bed.
"I don't know if it will make any more sense to you, but sure" I shrugged and took a sip of water that he handed me.
"I was in a dark room, I could hear you but not get to you and there was a noise and a flash of light and then I just started crying" I said.
"Huh...Now I understand why you've never told me any of your other dreams" He said laughing.
"Yeah" I tried to chuckle.
"You should see it outside though. It's the most snow I've ever seen in London before." He said leaving the room and going towards the window in my main room.
I got up, pulling on some shorts and Jake's shirt he had left on the floor, and walked over to see. I never had thought that London could be any more beautiful than it was to begin with. Everything was covered in snow. All of the cars on the side of the road were covered, the old buildings had parts where bricks were loose and the snow collected on them, and the trees and lamp posts were frocked.
"It's beautiful," I said as he wrapped his arms around me.
"Yeah…want to go play in it?" He said with a huge smile. I copied his smile and ran towards my room to put warmer clothes on and he ran up to his room, shirtless, to get more clothes on as well.
I put on this big heavy dark blue sweater and a black coat, my old Gryffindor scarf, and some sweatpants. I ran out to see Jake waiting for me in jeans, a big black hooded sweatshirt, and a hat. We raced each other down the stairs and into the street. There was a small park next to our building that we went into. We made a HUGE snowman, taller than me and gave him a football. This obviously progressed into a snowball fight that I was clearly winning until he charged after me and tackled me into a snowbank. Once he pinned me he started to kiss me.
"Is this how you win all of your fights?" I giggled.
"Obviously" He chuckled, kissing down onto my neck.
"I must remember to start more fights with you" I moaned.
"McDermott, Bell we have practice tomorrow. The game against France is in two days!" a coach yelled to us from the road.
"Whoops" Jake growled into my collarbone.
"We can continue this upstairs?" I said and before I was even done asking he had whisked me up and into his arms and was carrying me upstairs.
We warmed up with some tea and other vigorous activities. He was so perfect… I found myself thinking that any moment I was going to wake up and this was als some sort of dream.